


Character Study: Bahorel

by TheBraveHobbit



Series: Taut [9]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 03:38:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBraveHobbit/pseuds/TheBraveHobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern!AU Bahorel: Instigator, Champion, Miscreant</p>
            </blockquote>





	Character Study: Bahorel

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my sandbox-style Modern!AU: Taut  
> Additional content can be found on my tumblr: elfjolras.tumblr.com

****

**Modern!AU Bahorel: Instigator, Champion, Miscreant.**

 

> _“I’m not a cat person, Gavroche.”_   
>  _“Please? Just let him stay here! I can’t keep him at our place, my dad—”_   
>  _“What am I going to do with a cat?”_   
>  _“Put him on your head, like Courfeyrac! I’ve been calling him Chapeau, see?”_   
>  _“Chapeau, huh? Hand him here. He’s as big as you are, kid.”_

It’s not his cat. It’s not his cat and it’s not his kid and they’re not. his. problem. So why do people keep trusting him to deal with things?

Bahorel learned a long time ago that he wasn’t someone to be trusted with responsibility. He’s always been a wreck. He makes bad choices and he fucks things up. He breaks things. He hurts people. He can’t take care of his own business, so he’s got no place trying to look after anyone else’s.

It’s a shame too, because his parents were honest people. They worked. They worked and they worked and they worked. They worked until their fingers bled and their bones ached. They worked so many hours sometimes he forgot their faces. It didn’t matter. Winters were still cold and their coats were too thin. His family had food about as often as they didn’t, and Bahorel never understood what all that work was for, if they still went hungry and he shivered through the nights.

He was eight the first time he broke the law. He was thirteen when he got caught. Breaking into cars was reckless and stupid, but he’d been trying desperately to impress the older boys who ran his block. He had needed them to like him, to include him. At thirteen, Bahorel had been too young to put words to the idea, but he had understood that if you didn’t cast your lot with something larger than yourself, the world would sweep you away and leave nothing but an empty wake.

Bahorel learned to drift, finishing only so much school as was mandatory before he began to roam Paris. He realized that he could make marks all on his own, and if he stood big enough and screamed loudly enough, there wasn’t much in the world that would be able to smother his echo.

That’s really what matters to him. There’s nothing that frightens him more than the idea of fading out before he’s had time to burn his mark into the world. Because his mark will be a burn. It will be a scar. People like Bahorel don’t fix things. He’s destructive. He’s a force. He’s a weapon. He knows it; he’s built himself that way, stitching together the scraps of his life to construct an individual whose most notable characteristic is that he is as tame and predictable and gentle as fire itself. There’s nothing soft about him. He’s still a wreck. He still smashes windows and throws fists. Nothing’s changed.

Well, almost nothing. When he follows Enjolras to protests, when he defaces public property with vulgar red paint, when he shoulders up to police lines…he knows that he’s going to burn his mark, and it’s going to matter.


End file.
